Rank hypocrisy: Reform are only “tough on crime” when it comes to people who have ideas that they don’t like.

Reform UK like to make a big deal of how tough on crime they are. But what they don’t tell you in their various inflammatory speeches is they’re only interested in being “tough on crime” when its crime committed by people they don’t agree with. They are curiously soft on crime when it comes to their friends, actual or ideological.

Hope Not Hate provide a run down of several instances of this utter hypocrisy.

A lot of these examples come from various prominent Reformers commenting on the protest / rioting seen at anti-migrant demonstrations.

First we see Reform MP Lee Anderson sharing an extremely inflammatory take on what happened in Leeds

Last July, after the riot in Leeds, Reform’s Lee Anderson MP criticised “disgraceful scenes”. The rioters were incorrectly perceived to be entirely Muslim. On X, he wrote: “Import a third world culture then you get third world behaviour. These animals need locking up for good… I want my country back.”

“These animals” says it all.

What about after the Southport riots? Are those that committed violence there – injuring over 50 police officers – “animals”? Nope. Far from it. He’s strangely progressive in their case:

Compare this to Anderson’s comments after the Southport riots, in which he dismissed the violence. “We all do daft things when we’re young,” he said. “These are not far-right thugs, they’re just young idiots who got carried away.” He added that many of those arrested “probably had one too many”. Instead of locking up the criminals, Anderson suggested, the prime minister should “sit down with them, find out what the problem is and try to come up with some solutions rather than just banging them away”.

Pro-environment protestors, well, Reform doesn’t like those folk of course. So:

“Lock these nuisances up,” Anderson said in 2022. His colleagues are no different. “Arrest them, lock them up & throw away the key,” said Richard Tice that same year. He welcomed the jailing of Just Stop Oil demonstrators as “excellent news”, and has said he wanted them to receive “long sentences”, calling their actions “selfish antics”.

To be fair, plenty of people have criticised the protestors the type of civil disobedience that inconveniences non-participants, such as blocking roads. The pro-environment group Extinction Rebellion have done this on some of their protests. Farage went to far as to refer claim this was somehow “terrorism”. They’re criminals who need locking up:

…when it came to the 2018 Extinction Rebellion protests that also blocked traffic, Farage said the group was committing “economic terrorism”. On his LBC programme, he quoted highways legislation that makes it illegal to block roads. “Zero arrests! I can’t quite believe it,” he said. In 2021, he similarly called for Extinction Rebellion to be treated like a terrorist organisation. “Arrest these people, put them in prison,” he said.

But pro-environment protestors aren’t the only folk who use such tactics. Remember the anti-inheritance tax demonstrations in which hundreds of tractors blocked traffic in central London?

Again, those folk have ideas that Reform like, so not only did Nigel Farage actually attend the protest, he poured scorn on the idea blocking traffic causes much disruption at all. In fact, he’d love to see these protests spread far wider. Suddenly it’s not terrorism:

“These kinds of protests need to be in every market town in England,” Farage told GB News. Asked about the impact of tractors blocking busy roads, he said: “The level of disruption in people’s lives is minimal.”

Likewise his beliefs about civil disobedience in the form of vandalism are likewise extraordinarily inconsistent.

When his ideological enemies do it – in this case when Palestine Action spray-painted military aeroplanes he’s dead against it, voting for them to be branded a terrorist organisation, as did fellow Reform MPs Richard Tice and Sarach Pochin

But when the people supporting causes that he likes, in this case the anti-ULEZ campaigners who went around destroying traffic cameras, Farage claims it it’s perfectly understandable. This time because he doesn’t like the law, it’s the law that’s wrong – not the protestors criminally damaging public property:

“When laws become enemies of men, men become enemies of law,” party leader Farage said in 2023. “I have been firmly told that in our area no ULEZ camera will stay up for long.”

Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader was equally as understanding of the latter, saying

What we are seeing is the frustration of ordinary people who see this as a tax on the poor without any justification.

There is a saying that Frank Whilhoit came up with, famous in some circles, that criticises a fundamental part of a certain type of modern-day conservativism as having goals for the law that are entirely self-serving:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

The end product is a legal system that is functionally entirely two tier.

A two-tier legal system is of course something Reform often allege everyone else is doing. But it’s simply yet anther example of their extreme hypocrisy and unpatriotic disrespect for the institutions of Britain. What they mean is that they wish the legal system would punish their enemies whilst not interfering with the actions of their friends. The loudly criticise the exact behaviours that they themselves want to enact more of than virtually any other party. They would happily see a two tier system, an ineffective and unjust legal system, as long as it suits their ideological purposes whilst punishing their opponents.

Farage tells dangerous lie about police bussing in anti-fascist protestors to the anti-immigration Epping protests

There have recently been a series of ongoing anti-immigration protests against a hotel in Epping where some asylum seekers have been temporarily housed – and really the general existence of migrants at all.

Nigel Farage decided to fan the flames by telling lies designed to promote his evidence-free conspiracy-laden theory of two-tier policing.

His claim was that the police themselves used police vans to bus in a crowd of counter-protestors to confront his favoured anti-immigrant protestors who form the standard part of the demonstration. He went on GB News to claim that it was “absolutely astonishing” that “the police had bussed a group called Stand Up To Racism…from the station to the hotel” – as though the police had rounded up a group of people and formed a convenient taxi service just because they were against Reform and their allies.

Of course that never happened. The Essex Police force had to quickly release a statement that it was “categorically wrong” to claim that they had transported any protestors of any kind to the site in police vans. They released video footage to show what had actually happened, which was naturally nothing like what Farage had claimed.

Rather, police escorted the counter-protestors on foot as they were marching under their own steam towards the site. This is absolutely typical for any protest march. I have never been on one that didn’t have police monitoring the situation. It is mostly done to ensure the protestors “behave themselves” according to the law. It’s not sign of support – some people would see it actually as the opposite. And I’m sure they would have formed the same kind of cordon were Farage’s protest friends marching somewhere en masse.

The counter-protestors were later bundled into a police van – but to be driven away from the protest. But this was done only to ensure the safety of everyone present. After all, a set of anti-immigrant far-right agitators have previously turned up, only to end up being arrested for committing various forms of violence.

Says Chief Constable Harrington of the police force concerned:

“We’ve not driven anybody to that protest,” Mr Harrington said. “People made their own way there. We did take people away for their safety, for the safety of everyone there, because it was the best operational thing to do to prevent violence, to defuse the situation.”

The local Conservative MP, Neil Hudson, correctly criticised Nigel’s lies.

Conservative MP for Epping Forest Neil Hudson, asked about Mr Farage’s comments, told Sky News that what some politicians are saying “is not correct”. He added: “Essex Police are putting themselves in harm’s way to keep people safe and it’s very important that we have the facts, and we have no misinformation. But I’m categorical, I am fully in support of Essex Police and I’m very grateful for what they’re doing.”

The previous MP for Epping Forest shared a more general concern, saying:

It is the duty of elected representatives, all elected representatives, regardless of which party they represent, to do their best to encourage community cohesion and to calm down a potentially riotous situation. The considerable amount of misinformation by a particular political party is unfortunate and is working against community cohesion.

She didn’t name names, but I think we all know who she was referring to.

But Farage doesn’t care. Spreading misinformation to whip up his potential supporters into a frenzy of anger is all part of the game to him, no matter the potentially dangerous consequences, saying:

…if I was slightly out on accuracy, I apologise, but I think the gist of what I was saying was right

I’m not sure how the “gist” of claiming something happened that categorically did not happen could be “right”.

Reform Warwickshire endorses transport plan its own leader says is a waste of taxpayers money

Warwickshire’s Reform-led council, with its teenage leader, is back in the news again. This time it’s about its transport policy.

The meeting concerned was called in order to try and encourage Reform councillor Nigel Golby, who holds the portfolio for transport and planning, to provide some detail as to how he intends to spend the £66 million local transport grant.

In the event, Golby apparently sat in near-perfect silence throughout the whole meeting, moving Lib Dem councillor RIchard Dickson to note that:

His silence is deafening and he should be under no illusion that the clock is ticking

But plenty of other folk spoke up during the debate.

Leader of the council, George Finch, made it known that he believes cycle lanes are a waste of money

I do want to note my major concern with these cycle lanes. I believe they are a waste of taxpayers’ money, people don’t really use them so what is the point?

Others disagree, with Councillor Boad asking him the fair question “What on earth makes you think that?”. Either no reason was forthcoming, or Warwickshire World didn’t report it).

Finch also is, of course, against anything associated with that bogey-man phase all the Reformers are so scared of – “net zero” – saying there and then that he was going to cut net zero initiatives “to the bone”.

Luckily for the rest of us, despite Reform’s professed hatred of all things net zero and cycle related, it turns out that Finch and his Reform colleagues all joined their fellow councillors in reaffirming their commitment to both the cycle lane and net zero adjacent policies – whether through incompetence or hypocrisy who knows, but let’s take the win where we can.

Nigel Farage has mentioned his constituency in Parliament just four times in a whole year

We already saw Nigel Farage earning very low grades in terms of doing his actual job as an elected MP. In his first year he turned up to Parliament and spoke only a fraction of the number of times that other party leaders did – less than once a week. He also voted fewer times than his peers, despite his claims to have strong opinions on a vast array of topics and delight in ranting about whatever comes to his mind to any media channel that will have him.

We can feel especially sorry for the people who live in his constituency, Clacton. He has managed to mention his constituency, Clacton, a mere four times in his first year.

As a comparison, his deputy, Richard Tice, has spoken more than 4x as often, 211 times, and mentioned his consistency at least 25 times.

Why? Well, Farage is a busy man. He has at least 9 “second” jobs, most of which enrich his huge personal wealth far more than merely doing the job he was elected to do would do. Over the same period he’s received almost £1 million from his other jobs.

DeSmog shares some quotes that give us a further sense of his greedy and unpatriotic alternative activities:

“Over the last year, Farage has put his speaking tours of the U.S., his GB News show and various side hustles as a landlord, shilling for a climate science denial think tank and flogging nappies and tax-free gold, all ahead of being the MP for Clacton,” said Jolyon Maugham, Good Law Project executive director.

“It’s not so much Britain First as Farage First.”

A number of Clacton voters have noticed Farage’s absence. Speaking to The Mirror, local residents accused the Reform leader of “doing nothing” aside from “looking for photo opportunities”.

As they note, we can’t really be surprised at Farage’s irresponsible laziness given his previous political record:

Farage has a long history of failing to perform parliamentary duties. While serving as a Member of European Parliament (MEP), he was a member of its influential fisheries committee, yet over three years turned up to only one of 42 meetings.

Warwickshire Council’s Reform want to spend an extra £150,000 of public money on ‘unelected bureaucrats’

Fresh off of losing an argument about flags, the afore-mentioned leader of the council, George Finch, put forward a proposal for the council to pay for three “political advisors” at an estimated cost of an extra £150,000 from the public purse.

I can certainly see why a teenager in charge of a half billion pound budget might want as much advice as possible – but it’s most certainly the height of hypocrisy for a party that trades on the constant disparagement of “unelected bureaucrats” and “wasteful” government expenditure.

Sam Jones, a Green Party councillor, put it well:

Reform have had a sniff of power, they’re making it so clear that they never cared a jot for the will of their supporters. No to overpaid, unelected bureaucrats before the election, but yes to up to £150,000 of unfunded spending on political assistants now the campaigning is over.

George Cowcher from the Liberal Democrats is also no fan:

These proposals are all about spending some money so they can have a chum in their group and I think that is not particularly helpful given the financial state of this council

Although perhaps Reform don’t really have a grasp on the financial state of the council given another one of Cowcher’s critiques is that a quarter of the way through the financial year there’d been no proposals from them regarding managing the authority’s budget.

Around the same time, the non-Reform parties of the council put forward another motion. This one was to officially recognise that climate change is real – increasingly a novelty amongst Reform folk, contrary to basically everyone else who might know about the situation – and support the existing declaration around there being a climate emergency.

Thankfully that motion was carried, against the wishes of Reform.

Sarah Feeney of Labour explains on reason why tackling the issue is critical in that area even today:

Sarah Feeney, the Labour leader, said the climate crisis was a “not a hypothetical” and was already having a major impact on farmers, with flooding causing elderly people to sometimes barricade themselves in their homes.

There was a group anti-Reform protestors outside the meeting concerned, including Becky Davidson, who, presumably in reference to the flag argument, was rightfully sick of Finch “using a marginalised community as a propaganda tool”.

Reform appoint a teenager to lead Warwickshire Council and its £500 million budget

George Finch was one of the many Reform councillors elected in the last local elections. However he is relatively unique in terms of his age, having been only 18 when he took up the position in Warwickshire council.

Photo taken from the BBC.

The elected leader of the council at the time in Warwickshire was another, somewhat more aged, Reform gentleman; Rob Howard. But not for long. Howard was one of the many, many Reform councillors that quit or were fired after a few weeks of doing the job.

He left Finch in place as the temporary cover for the position of council leader. More recently, Mr Finch though, was appointed to take the position up permanently. This final appointment was the a result of a vote, although one that he won only because the race was so tight that the rules allowed the council’s chairman – who also happens to be from Reform – to cast an extra vote to break the 23:23 tie.

This means Mr Finch becomes the permanent head of Warwickshire County Council. He’s now in charge of £1.5 billion’s worth of assets, managing a budget of around £500 million, responsible for over 5,000 employees, on behalf of his 600,000 constituents.

Quite the responsibility!

Now, perhaps this is a slightly tough topic, because young people getting engaged with politics is undoubtedly a good thing. The more young people that take an interest in political matters, the better, at least in general. Aside from such engagement being a public good in general, their views often can of course be at least as informed and reasonable as those of older adults. often moreso (although I’m not so sure that’s self evident in the case of Mr Finch; see the section of “socialist wokeism” below).

And I can see the attraction for a certain type of youngster. It’s not hard to see several recent governments, local and national, as having totally let down the younger generations in many, many ways.

All I can say though is that it wouldn’t have been remotely advisable to appoint me, or anyone I have ever known, to a position of such complexity and responsibility at the age of 18, just after completing my A-levels. Or even at 19 for that matter, giving Finch the benefit of the doubt as having had a birthday since his election.

In general, to me it seems probably best for basically your first ever job post-school to not to involve being the boss of an institution very much in the public eye that involves managing millions of pounds and making decisions that could be literally life or death for some folk at the receiving end of the council’s offerings.

This is not to blame Finch. He’s a right to apply for the job. He’s clearly a very adept and impressive young man in certain ways. Good for him for taking such an interest in civic life. But it feels like the height of irresponsibility to both the area’s constituents and to George Finch himself to put him in harm’s way like this.

Modern-day politics can be cruel and damaging – especially when Reform, who trade on conflict and hatred, are involved. He’s already had to have Reform’s standard waste-of-time argument about flags. To put a necessarily-inexperienced teenager into the position of being the figurehead for a deliberately divisive party, managing a half-billion pound budget and making critical service decisions seems an absolute abdication of responsibility; almost abusive.

A local Labour MP appears to have reservations:

Rachel Taylor, the Labour MP for North Warwickshire and Bedworth, said she was “deeply concerned” that Reform was “proposing that an eighteen-year-old with no previous work experience should be running our county council”.

And another:

Preet Gill, has criticised the decision, saying the people of Warwickshire “frankly deserve better”.

“This is not work experience,” she told the BBC. “This is not about learning on the job.”

The Deputy Leader of the local Labour group does give Finch respect for being an extremely mature 18-year old, but still notes that:

Making these very far-reaching decisions about the lives of our Warwickshire residents – I don’t want to criticise 18-year-olds – but it does need people with experience

Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK thinks that “Reform is trolling democracy” with this appointment. He says that it’s simply too much to ask of a 19 year old who just left school (or, more accurately, might be on his summer holidays)

They simply haven’t got the training and necessary experience to do so. And by allowing this appointment to take place, Reform shows us what they think of us.

They’re treating us with contempt. They’re making a mockery of the whole system of local government. They are undermining democracy and public services, and they’re doing so deliberately. These people are not to be trusted. They’re not serious about meeting our needs.

A resident of the local also thinks it’s a bad idea:

Geoffrey Manion labelled the appointment “crazy”. He said: “He hasn’t lived long enough to know what’s what. At the end of the day, he’s just not old enough. It’s crazy, absolutely crazy.”

Another says:

I have no problem with him being a councillor, but I have a big problem with him being the leader of the council. I just think you need more experience of life before you can take on such a position of responsibility. It wouldn’t happen in any other walk of life, would it

Although to be fair that’s not the universal opinion of local residents – some are perfectly happy with the situation. For their sake let’s hope their optimism is well-placed.

In the recent past Councillor Finch has written articles for “The New Reformer”, a Reform-allied website, producing such compelling articles as “Richard Tice – The Cool Cat of Politics“, of which I promise to only share a few words:

Above all the great mannerisms, fashion sense, intelligence and integrity Mr Tice showed the people of Boston and Skegness that he meant business…
…
Many, many constituencies in the UK would love an MP as strong, brave and somewhat indestructible as the man the cool cat himself Mr Richard Tice.

On his profile page he describes his own principles as being “integrity, honesty and respect”. A less charitable person than me might applaud the sentiment but note he probably joined the wrong party. To be fair he wasn’t always a Reform guy; in the past he was a Conservative, having had since then some (presumably childhood) conversion experience.

When asked to sum his politics up in a few words though, George iss back on familiar Reform territory, expressing the highest degree of love for the abjectly failed experiment that more than half the country wish they could largely undo that is Brexit:

If I was to be politically summed up in a few words it would be; Brexit, sovereignty, strong military and most importantly a strong and united family unit.

Workwise, the teenage Mr Finch apparently isn’t satisfied with just running an entire council.

The Byline Times discovered that he’s also listed as an online tutor for a company called SuperProf. Hire him for just £15 an hour!

His sales pitch:

I’m 18 turning 19, I have just finished A-Level and I know what you need to pass your exams, the Knowledge is the most important area of A-Level or GCSE’s.

[I] specialise in Tudor History, Cold War, USA politics, UK politics and many other areas in history too

They note that he hasn’t declared this on his council declaration of interests. If someone actually paid him the £15 an hour then concealing it from the said declaration is of course another example of a Reform councillor breaking the rules.

One rule for them; another for the rest of us.

Being a councillor wasn’t necessarily his original dream career. In fact, his ambition until recently was to become a history teacher. But his dreams were thwarted by nothing less than “socialist wokeism”:

I loved history and I loved teaching but the problem was the curriculum, especially history. Universities and colleges are a conveyor belt for socialist wokeism.”

Nonetheless, it seems like, the Byline Times was led to believe that Finch plans to go back to university in September.

He’s got a lot going on.

Finch, who as we’ve seen is quite the history fan, has previously noted that there is a precedent for extraordinarily young politicians in the UK. William Pitt the Younger was elected at the age of 21 -and in fact became Prime Minister at 24). However it will still be a couple of years before Mr Finch reaches that particular ripe old age.

Another thing Farage doesn’t know anything about: how his own water policy would work

Now the British Governments appears to be finally trying to address the absolute disaster that is Britain’s water industry, Nigel Farage is of course trying to get in on the act in yet another desperate attempt to say whatever it takes to make him popular.

He’s absolutely right that something needs to be done about the industry. It’s just that what he says he’s going to do once again appears to be based on pure fantasy vibes.

This week’s pull from the random sounds-good-if-you-don’t-think-it-through grab-bag of Farage policies is that he’s going to “nationalise half of the water industry“

Which half, how and why, of course, are questions that neither have, nor to his thinking, need answers.

Which is presumably why he had none in last weekend’s famous BBC interview with Laura Kuenssberg. We previously learned from it that he knew nothing about his own councils or the environment. It turns out he also knows nothing about his own water policy – or nothing convincing at any rate.

Given the dire state of state finances, Kuenssberg fairly asks:

How much taxpayers’ money would you be prepared to spend to take half of the water industry into public control?

After he rambled on for a bit about how shareholders might just magically all decide to give him their stakes for free, she tried to get him to actually answer this very basic question:

…what I’m asking you is how much of our viewers’ money you would be prepared to spend on that? Because the credible estimate is it would be about £50 billion.

His answer?

Well, I think it’d be a lot less than that if you strike the right deal.

Uh oh. Just like his trans-Atlantic crush, Donald Trump. he obviously considers himself a detail-free deal maker.

“A lot less”. What does that mean? Kuenssberg asks him for the roughest of estimates:

So you don’t know how much it would be in any ballpark? £1 billion, £10 billion?

But no, no interview can fool Farage into even pretending he put any thought into his proclamations! His answer:

Of course not.

but apparently

…it doesn’t need to be a big sum of money if you incentivise private capital to come in and do the job properly.

Oh good. Not a “big sum of money” then. Kuenssberg points out that it is precisely private capital that runs it now. And, as we know, that’s been an absolute disaster. They created this disaster.

But private capital runs it at the moment and they haven’t invested enough.

Farage:

Of course. Listen, all sorts of people set up businesses and fail. There are more business failures than there are successes.

Well that’s reassuring!

In a last ditch attempt to get him to say something concrete, or at least try and show a smidgeon of justification for his words, she notes that he hasn’t always been such a fan of public ownership.

When Jeremy Corbyn talked about nationalising water, you used to say his economics were from la-la land. So why is your proposal not from la-la land?

His response of course in no way either addresses the question or explains why it doesn’t matter that his proposal is undoubtedly comes more from la-la land than anything Corbyn could dream up.

Look, we have Conservative and Labour governments who can’t even build a railway. So do we want government running these things? No.

I’m not sure what we learned from that exchange then except that Farage agrees that wants the water industry to be owned both by the state and by private capital, but also that neither the state or private capital are capable of running it. He agrees with what Kuenssberg claims but also disagrees with it. And whatever he does won’t cost much money because he will “make a deal”, contents unspecified – and/or anyway maybe those famously kind-hearted shareholders will just give everything to him for free.

Farage’s vibes-based policies are running amok once more. I’m sure all the economists that laughed in despair at his previous ludicrous economic proposals are guffawing again tongiht.

Here’s the video, courtesy of Spotted News UK.

Reform lose yet another councillor – sacking Ed Hill, who coincidentally had recently reported his colleagues for breaking election rules

Reform recently lost yet another councillor. They’re well into the double figures by now.

This time it’s Ed Hill. Reform recently threw him out of the party, cancelling his membership.

The stated reason the party gave for his eviction was that he wrote to MPs about free school meals signing the letter from all Devon’s Reform councillors, even though the rest of them hadn’t formally given their permission to be included. Supposedly this “damaged the interests of the party” who presumably do not want to be seen to be in favour of a policy as progressive as helping feed hungry children.

However, Ed Hill, and plenty of other people, don’t believe this is the real reason they wanted to get rid of him. Especially as he believed he did have their consent to sign the letter

In a WhatsApp exchange seen by ITV West Country, Mr Hill attempted to ask his fellow Reform councillors if they’d be happy to sign the letter about free school meals, which was addressed to all of Devon’s MPs and published on social media.

One councillor said: “They will sign the letter, they just won’t join this group.”

Hill thinks it’s a stitch-up, saying:

Let’s be clear: this incident is being used as a pretext

So why else might Reform want to get rid of him?

A while ago he reported a couple of his council colleagues and an election agent to the police for breaches of election expense rules.

For UK county council elections, spending limits are set per ward based on how many voters there are there. Mr Hill reported now-councillor Neil Stevens for breaching those limits by over a hundred pounds – spending £1995.72 compared to the limit of £1827.04.

He alleges that Stevens’ brother, Tony Stevens, who also just about won his a council seat in the same election for Reform, claimed a podcast expense that should have been split between the brothers – meaning that Neil would have been over the limit by a larger amount than the above suggests.

So Hill made a complaint about this to both the police and the electoral commission, because he’d made:

“a clear promise to the people of Exeter” to “hold our candidates and councillors to the same high standards we expect of others”.

Ed clearly joined the wrong party if that was how he wanted to behave.

What did Reform UK do about his report? Well, as we’ve seen so many times already, holding candidates and councillors to high standards really isn’t their scene. So, naturally they immediately demoted Ed Hill from the position of chairman of Reform UK party for “bringing the party into disrepute” – presumably for reporting this crime. Telling someone about the offence is clearly a much bigger infraction than committing it in the first place for this corrupt party.

Of course Reform has no intention of taking any action against Neil Stevens, the Reform councillor who is alleged to have committed the offence.

Hill was permitted to carry on doing his basic councillor job as a Reform representative.

Until now, when he was forcibly ejected from the party entirely, supposedly due to the letter based offence outlined above.

Perhaps it wasn’t unexpected. He claims that Reform were already taking out their anger at being caught out for potential electoral crimes on him, saying in a statement that:

Since reporting a fellow Reform UK councillor to the police for suspected electoral offences, I have been systematically ostracised from internal party communication — removed from WhatsApp groups, excluded from meetings, and shut out from coordination with my own colleagues. If Reform UK had maintained proper internal channels, this situation would never have occurred.

And that for all their clearly ridiculous claims about openness, honesty, accountability and transparency Reform have no intention of fostering an environment conducive to that, saying:

This is not just a personal matter. It raises wider questions about how Reform UK treats whistleblowers, how it manages internal discipline, and whether it can honestly claim to support transparency and accountability.

Farage repeatedly has ‘no idea’ about anything in his recent BBC interview

The Independent reports on Farage’s distinct lack of knowledge, or even curiosity, on show during last Sunday’s interview with Laura Kuenssberg.

The Reform UK leader was asked about Scarborough Town Council increasing its mayor’s allowance by 600 per cent, despite his party promising to cut costs for taxpayers.

Asked about the rise, from £500 to £3,500, Mr Farage said: “I have no idea… whether what you say is true or not, I have no idea.”

Asked whether it is the right thing to do, Mr Farage again said he has “no idea”, before saying he has “no idea” whether Thomas Murray, Reform’s mayor of Scarborough Town Council, does the role as a full-time job.

Here’s some of that, courtesy of PoliticsJOE’s Youtube channel:

Unfortunately this is not the only topic he has no idea about.

He went on to say he has “no idea” how much humans have contributed towards climate change.

Quite concerning for someone who at the end of the day wants to be the person setting policies regarding such matters.

Of course the mayor story is true, and there are no shortage of the top experts in the world available to tell you about serious human impact on climate change if you can just be bothered to spend 5 seconds searching.

Although I do not believe for one minute that he never heard of either of these topics given his pre-emptory “I’ve no idea” before Kuenssberg even finished the question, trying to laugh it off – it’s almost certainly just another Farage lie.

Is Ian Cresswell yet another Reform councillor responsible for protecting the environment who doesn’t believe in climate change?

It looks like Ian Cresswell might be the latest in the ever-growing list of Reform’s collection of councillors, and other hangers-on who hold more power than they deserve, who don’t believe in the basic facts of climate change.

He’s a little less overt about it than some of his peers, not going so far as to claim the whole thing is a shadowy conspiracy a la Councillor Bingham – perhaps in order to save his skin given he is, once again, the cabinet member for the environment. Not that that stopped Bingham.

When asked in a meeting whether he agrees with virtually every knowledgeable expert in the field that climate change is happening and caused by human activities, Councillor Cresswell didn’t exactly say no. He just prevaricated.

I pondered my answer to this for quite a while. I also read many different pieces of information on it – and it all depends which side you want to sit, which hat you want to wear.

So I will simply say that this is a very complex area of science and the questions on the consensus of human activity simply can’t be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Councillor Jenkins, the person who raised the question to Cresswell, quite rightly concludes

The fact that it had to be pondered and you had to think about the answer is a problem – the answer is obviously yes. It’s a scientific fact.

and that:

If we have someone in charge of the environment who denies the basic science of the environment then maybe they shouldn’t be in that position.

He asked Cresswell whether he’d thus re-consider his position.

Cresswell would not. So that’s that.

Says Jenkins:

It’s deeply worrying that someone in charge of protecting our environment can’t commit to the basic facts.

Worcester was flooded five times last winter, causing huge distress and upset for residents.

Now, farmers are sounding the alarm bells about failed crops as we enter our third heat wave of the summer, after an exceptionally dry spring. Worcester and the wider county are on the frontline of climate change. We need leadership that takes the climate emergency seriously.”